To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a webbrowser that supports HTML5video Oprah Winfrey reflected on the time late TV star Joan Rivers body-shamed her on The Tonight Show in the most humiliating way. Nowadays Oprah is one of the most recognisable talk show hosts in the world but throughout her career she has faced prejudice in many forms – including fat-shaming. The iconic TV personality, 70, spoke about one incident that occurred during her first-ever appearance on The Tonight Show with guest host Joan Rivers in 1985 in which the late presenter called out her weight on national television.
At the time, Oprah was a presenter for AM Chicago and was also waiting to hear if she had been cast in the film adaptation of The Color Purple (a role she eventually landed an Oscar nomination for). ‘I go to this fat farm because I am devastated and I know that it is because I’m overweight,’ she recalled on the Jamie Kern Lima Show . ‘I’d been shamed on the Tonight Show by Joan Rivers,’ she explained as part of her motivation to attend the ‘health retreat’.
‘I have my first appearance on the Tonight Show and they pre-interview you before so we’re supposed to be talking about the great success of this little talk show in Chicago that’s beating Phil Donoghue,’ she recalled. Oprah continued: ‘Joan Rivers turns to me and says “Tell me why are you so fat?” on national television. I don’t know what do with that, I just am like .
